City of Silence (City of Mystery) (3 page)

“Perhaps
the applications of the tool will become clearer if we move on to an example,”
Trevor said mildly.  As usual, the group seemed to be split, with Emma and
Rayley embracing the theoretical while Tom remained skeptical of any methodology
that expanded beyond hard science.  Judging by the look on his face, Davy was
more inclined to agree with Tom and it was impossible to tell with Geraldine,
who had merely attacked her second piece of tart.  Trevor was not sure where he
himself stood on the matter.  As methods went, criminal profiling appeared to
be the proverbial double edged sword, as capable as sending detectives down the
wrong path as the right one.

“Yes
please, give us the particulars,” said Emma and there was a synchronized
turning of chairs.

“The
case originates from Scotland,” Trevor said. “Three separate rapes, committed
over a four month span of time all taking place near a railway depot in a small
rural town. The assaults occurred in the afternoon, each within a hour of the
time when the train is scheduled to pass through – twice just after and the
last just before.”

“What
sort of train?” Rayley asked.  “A commuter train which makes many stops or a
direct route train, which does not?”

“Please
explain for us all why you are asking that question,” Trevor gently reminded
him.  The goal of the Tuesday Night games was for the thought processes of each
member to become utterly transparent to the others, and then use the subsequent
analysis to illustrate to the volunteers how the mind of a trained detective
might work.

“When
you said that the rapes were occurring near a depot,” Rayley said, “my first
thought was that the attacker was either arriving or departing by train, or
both.  That he wasn’t a recognizable local citizen, in other words, but rather
using the railway to assault women who would be unable to identify him to the
district police.”

“Perhaps
someone who rides the trains on a regular basis,” Davy added.  “It is a pity
that trains do not keep registers of their passengers as ships do.”

“Indeed,”
said Trevor.  The ability to correlate suspects with the dates of their channel
crossings had been an enormous benefit in the Parisian case they had just
concluded.  But trains kept no such records. 

“We
could begin with eyewitness accounts,” said Davy.  “Conductors or regular
commuters might recall who traveled that route on a consistent basis, perhaps
even on the dates in question.   Did we ascertain if the train was a local or
an express?” 

“Ascertain”
was rapidly becoming one of Davy’s favorite words, Trevor noted with amused
approval, and he had finally learned to put the emphasis on the last syllable.

“No,
we did not,” Trevor said.  “But our conversation has run off the rails rather
early this time, if you’ll all pardon the pun, and the full ramifications of
Rayley’s question have thus remained unexplored.”  He squinted down at his
papers.  “This train was a local, the route running between Aberdeen to
Edinburgh with seven stops, three of them very close to the small town where
the attacks occurred.”

“So
the man could have boarded the train at any point along the route,” Rayley
said.  “And gotten off at any of the stops as well.”

“I
find it most interesting that he must have for some reason changed his
methodology,” Emma said.  “You said the first two times the rapes occurred
shortly after the train had passed through the depot.  This seems to me quite
the logical sequence.  A man disembarks from a train in a small town and
commits a crime.  But then the last time the rape occurs just before the train
is scheduled to leave, which implies that he was already in the town.  In this final
instance he was more concerned with using the train as a means of departure
rather than arrival and timed his attack accordingly.”

“How
often do trains pass through?”  Tom asked.

“And
would you explain to us exactly why you raise that question?” Trevor asked in
turn.  He disliked his role as the stern schoolmaster of the group but if the
games were to maximize their usefulness, he could not indulge great vaulting
leaps of speculation in any of his team members, no matter how apt they might
be. They must march together, step by step, through the entire bloody process
if they were to emerge as a fully functioning unit.

“Because
Emma’s statement is quite right,” said Tom. “The change in modality seems a
major clue to something or another, although right now I can’t think what.  The
first two times, yes, he steps from the train, finds his victim, and does the
deed.  But then what?  He must wait around the town avoiding detection, until
the next train arrives?  It hardly seems a sensible plan, especially in light
of the fact he is a rapist, not a murderer.  His victim is presumably left quite
capable of running about shrieking out her story, alerting both the police and
any nearby brothers or husbands with a pitchfork.  How long would he have to
wait?”

Trevor
smiled slightly.  The debates of Tuesday night were rapidly becoming his
favorite part of the week.  “Quite good, Tom and Emma, for this is precisely
the first part of the puzzle the Scotland police latched upon.  The trains run
an hour apart in the mornings and early evenings when workers are commuting to
and fro from Aberdeen, but makes only two stops at this particular small depot
in the afternoon.  One of them is scheduled at 1:25, the other at 2:40.  From
there, the next train does not pass until 5:15.”

“And
that is most likely the reason he changed his methodology,” said Emma. 

“Were
the women who were attacked from the train too, Sir?” Davy asked.  “Or did they
live in the town where the crimes occurred?”

“A
reasonable question, Davy,” Trevor said.  “But a bit premature.  I shall give
you particulars about the victims in a minute, but for now let’s stick to the
question of how our criminal was using the trains.”

“Here’s
my notion,” said Emma.  “The first two times he gets off the train in the
afternoon, finding a deserted depot and a town full of women, most of the men
either having long since commuted to work in the factories or else they’re
laboring out in the fields.  He finds his victim, rapes her, and is left, just
as Tom suggests, with a sizable wait before the next train.  I am happy to say
that I don’t know how long it takes for an assault of this nature to be
instigated and concluded, but I can’t imagine it would fill a block of time
between 1:25 and 2:40.”  She glanced around the circle, but the four men
provided no further illumination, so she shrugged and continued.  “Once the act
is finished, our man must hide and somehow find a way to safely avoid detection
until he can catch the next train.  But this is risky in the extreme.  They say
that most women who are so attacked do not confess it, but if either of the
first two women he raped had happened to tell, then Tom is quite right.   He
would have the whole village around his ears within minutes.  People swarming
about in pursuit of him and most obviously looking around the depot, the train
being the only swift and anonymous way a stranger would have of getting out of
town.”

“Bravo,”
Rayley said, taking off his glasses and blowing forcefully on the lenses.  He
had been in Paris when Emma had joined the group and initially he had been
skeptical about the contributions a schoolmaster’s daughter could bring to the
world of crime.  But Emma had continued to impress him, one Tuesday night after
the next.

“Just
so,” said Tom. “He has some sort of close call after the second rape perhaps,
so he changes his methodology.  This time he gets off of the train at some
earlier time and hides before the rape, rather than after.  He bides his time
until he knows a train is due, then commits the rape and swiftly boards the
train.  He’s on his way well before his victim has time to alert her
townspeople, if indeed she is inclined to do so.” 

“But
his mere presence would be alarming,” Rayley said.  “He’s already raped two
women, who certainly know his face.  Might he not encounter one of them, as
he’s strolling about the limited streets of this tiny burg?  A strange man in a
city of women in the middle of the afternoon would be bound to draw attention.”

“Good
point,” Tom conceded.

“So
why would he keep returning to the same place?” Davy asked. “Detective Welles
said the train made seven stops.  After the first rape or at least the second,
it seems the man would try a different town.”

“You
aren’t telling us everything,” Emma said, looking at Trevor with narrowed eyes. 
“You’re cutting the information into very small pieces, as if we’re babies who
might choke on too large a bite.”

“No,”
said Rayley, as bemused as she was irritated. “He is actually doling out the
facts in small increments because that is how you learn things on a genuine
police case.  You aren’t handed a file of twenty pages of information, all
neatly sequenced and categorized.  You start with these very small bites of
information and you progress.”

“Please,
kind sir, do give us a little more,” said Tom, reaching over to pour a splash
of wine into his glass and then, without asking, into Trevor’s. “Your smile has
become unbearably smug.”

“Fair
enough,” Trevor said.  “But first let’s follow this bit about the train
schedule to its logical end, for there’s one point that hasn’t yet been
raised.  When our man takes the train into town during the day, whether it is
midday or early afternoon, he would be disembarking at a time and place where
most passengers are embarking.  That in itself might draw the eye, might it
not?”

“Is
this town a rest stop?” Davy asked. “One of the places along the route where
the train pauses longer to give the passengers time to find food or use the
facilities?”

“Precisely,”
said Trevor. “That’s what I was hoping someone would ask.  The town in question
is Montrose, almost the midway point of the route between Aberdeen and
Edinburgh.  So I’m inclined to think that our man gets off with the throng of
passengers and then simply does not get back on.  Bides his time and finds his
victim, just as Tom says, waiting until close to the time the next train comes
through to strike.”

“All
right, so far you’ve avoided saying anything at all about the women,” Rayley
said, stroking his wispy mustache as he gave Trevor a sidelong glance.  “Were
they passengers on the train or women from the town?”

“Townswomen,
all three.”

“Assaulted
near the depot?”

“Relatively
close.”

“And
what were local women who had no intention of riding a train doing so close to
a depot?”

“Selling
things.”

“Such
as?”

“Hot
cross buns in one case,” Trevor said.  “Fruit from a cart in another.  And the
first one attacked was offering amenities of an entirely different nature.”

“So
apparently the fact that a commuter train makes a rest stop there provides a
large part of the livelihood of the town,” Tom mused.  “A few businesses spring
up around the depot or perhaps the merchants bring their wares down when the
train is due.  A wheelbarrow of fruit, a tray of pastries, even an enterprising
prostitute looking for some midday trade.  A flurry of people disembark,
transact this minimal business, and then they reboard a few minutes later.  So
our criminal does not merely use the train to come and go but also as a means
of drawing his victims – women who come down to the depot and who, when the
train leaves, are abruptly alone.”

“The
first woman he raped was a prostitute?”  Davy confirmed.

Trevor
nodded.  “Are you wondering why a man would bother to rape a prostitute when a
few coins might get him what he wanted?”

Davy
quickly shook his head, actually rather offended, although he took pains not to
show it.  “You’ve told us often enough, Sir, that we should view rape as a
crime of violence and not just of sex.  But I was thinking that perhaps he
chose his first victim just because she’d be unlikely to tell the story.  If a
woman is known about town for conducting that sort of business, how serious
would the local police treat her claim that she’d been raped?  So she ‘d likely
keep mum about what happened, wouldn’t she, Sir?”

“She
would indeed,” Trevor said.  “The first victim did not come forward with her
story at all until the second and third woman had made claims.  Very apt of
you, Davy.”

“So
he aims at an easy target with his first shot,” Tom said, not noticing that his
analogy made both Trevor and Davy wince.  “But then he gains a bit of
confidence and expands his pool of potentials to include two tradeswomen,
victims who we can only assume the town viewed more sympathetically.  I would
imagine rape to be a rather noisy sort of crime.  Apt to draw attention if the
woman puts up a struggle.  Where did the assaults actually take place?”

“The
first in an edge of the woods, the second in a public woman’s washroom, the one
used by the train passengers,” Trevor said.  “For the third, the baker, he
presumably followed the woman back to her place of business for she was
attacked in her own kitchen.”

“Did
he use a weapon to subdue the women?” Rayley asked.

Trevor
hesitated.  “He had a scarf.”